The journey to living by design.

Art Assignment 1: Meet in the Middle

Here’s the email I sent to my friends.

I’ve been watching a You tube series called the Art Assignment and I’d like to complete some of their assignments and post them to my WordPress blog. Would you girls want to help me? Also, would you be comfortable guest staring on my blog?

2. Pick a date. I suggest Sunday April 20th for lunch, Thursday April 24th for dinner or Saturday April 26th for lunch.

3. Once we decide that stuff, I will send you the halfway meeting point between all three of our houses. I suggest we show up with some cash in hand and eat at whatever restaurant we find closest to that point.

Hugs,Jen

My friends quickly agreed so here is the second email I sent:

I knew I could count on you guys! This is going to be fun!

So after we set this up, we’re not allowed to communicate about it, even on the day of, (no phone calls, emails, texts). Map 1 shows our three houses. Map 2 is the triangle our houses make. Map 3 marks the centre of our triangle, (yeah geometry!) Map 4 is our zoomed in location, (the corner of Huron Street and William Street). Shall I meet you both there at 6pm on Thursday the 24th?

Go art!Jen

Here are the maps used to figure out our meeting place:

So having completed this assignment, I noticed a few things.

First, our meeting point ended up being very near Adelaide Street, which divides London, Ontario into East of Adelaide (EOA) and West of Adelaide. Think of East Egg and West EggThe Great Gatsby. also, see the EOA song Julie mentions (and sings along to) in her vlog).

Next, we used some unusual methods to complete assignment one. When I think of making art, I usually imagine paints, paper, canvass, clay and the like but this assignment was about art as an experience. Our little group used geography, math, written language, oral communication, technology, photography, video, and the physicality of a journey to compete our project. This widens the definition of what art is.

Finally, as you saw in the emails above, our group arranged where and when to meet but we never discussed how we would document our adventure. I found it interesting that we all chose slightly different but complimentary methods of presentation. For example, Jodie used video and Julie used video and photos. I used computer technology (email, MapQuest, Jing and WordPress,) and videos and text. Now that it is complete, we will be using WordPress, Tumblr, Facebook, and Twitter to share our work with all of you. Please enjoy!

Here are the photos and video from our adventure:

Here is my walk to the meeting point. If you look closely, you can see Julie walking in front of me.

We arrive at the Palasad for dinner.

Our table had a bowling pin on it. Also, a menu Julie had to examine very closely.